Nervous system disorders affect millions of people, causing death and a degradation of life. Nervous system disorders include disorders of the central nervous system, peripheral nervous system, and mental health and psychiatric disorders. Such disorders include, for example without limitation, epilepsy, Parkinson's disease, essential tremor, dystonia, and multiple sclerosis (MS). Additionally, nervous system disorders include mental health disorders and psychiatric disorders which also affect millions of individuals and include, but are not limited to, anxiety (such as general anxiety disorder, panic disorder, phobias, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)), mood disorders (such as major depression, bipolar depression, and dysthymic disorder), sleep disorders (narcolepsy), obesity, and anorexia. As an example, epilepsy is the most prevalent serious neurological disease across all ages. Epilepsy is a group of neurological conditions in which a person has or is predisposed to recurrent seizures. A seizure is a clinical manifestation resulting from excessive, hypersynchronous, abnormal electrical or neuronal activity in the brain. (A neurological event is an activity that is indicative of a nervous system disorder. A seizure is a type of a neurological event.) This electrical excitability of the brain may be likened to an intermittent electrical overload that manifests with sudden, recurrent, and transient changes of mental function, sensations, perceptions, and/or involuntary body movement. Because the seizures are unpredictable, epilepsy affects a person's employability, psychosocial life, and ability to operate vehicles or power equipment. It is a disorder that occurs in all age groups, socioeconomic classes, cultures, and countries. In developed countries, the age-adjusted incidence of recurrent unprovoked seizures ranges from 24/100,000 to 53/100,000 person-years and may be even higher in developing countries. In developed countries, age specific incidence is highest during the first few months of life and again after age 70. The age-adjusted prevalence of epilepsy is 5 to 8 per 1,000 (0.5% to 0.8%) in countries where statistics are available. In the United States alone, epilepsy and seizures affect 2.3 million Americans, with approximately 181,000 new cases occurring each year. It is estimated that 10% of Americans will experience a seizure in their lifetimes, and 3% will develop epilepsy by age 75.
There are various approaches in treating nervous system disorders. Treatment therapies can include any number of possible modalities alone or in combination including, for example, electrical stimulation, magnetic stimulation, drug infusion, and/or brain temperature control. Each of these treatment modalities can be operated using closed-loop feedback control. Such closed-loop feedback control techniques receive from a monitoring element a neurological signal that carries information about a symptom or a condition or a nervous system disorder. Such a neurological signal can include, for example, electrical signals (such as EEG, ECoG, and/or EKG), chemical signals, other biological signals (such as change in quantity of neurotransmitters), temperature signals, pressure signals (such as blood pressure, intracranial pressure or cardiac pressure), respiration signals, heart rate signals, pH-level signals, and peripheral nerve signals (cuff electrodes on a peripheral nerve). Monitoring elements can include, for example, recording electrodes or various types of sensors.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,995,868 discloses a system for the prediction, rapid detection, warning, prevention, or control of changes in activity states in the brain of a patient. Use of such a closed-loop feed back system for treatment of a nervous system disorder may provide significant advantages in that treatment can be delivered before the onset of the symptoms of the nervous system disorder.
Before administering a therapeutic treatment for a nervous system disorder, such as epilepsy, it is important that the location and the extent of a neurological event be provided to a clinician or physician before configuring a medical device. It is also important that the clinician or physician be able to test the therapeutic treatment in order to determine a patient's acceptance and to determine the effectiveness of the treatment. Method and apparatus that enable a clinician to configure and test a medical device system for an effective and safe treatment of a nervous system disorder, before applying regular, is beneficial in the field of medical device systems for delivering treatment for such disorders.